Is Steve Ballmer a hero?

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One thing pretty much everyone with a bit of brain grease knows is that you shouldn't annoy the people who have power and money. And although I dislike Win8 immensely I have to admit that Microsoft actually seems to be on some sort of strange anti-capitalist trip. The most loyal Windows strongholds are the corporations, governments and firms, the people with the POWER and the MONEY, yet Ballmer tries everything to annoy them! I mean WinRT doesn't even have APIs for scanner access:

That means LOTS of businessy scenario is out of the window right there (document management, OCR, archiving software, lots of LOB cases etc.) Not to forget the other Metro limitations, Metro on Server 2012 and the hefty price increases for Office products recently. I mean even if the goal is to squeeze everyone on Azure and Office365 like some people are here thinking - how are you gonna fill these web interfaces with data in Metro 8 when most biz stuff involves mega-complicated forms, copying one set to another (thus multi-window) and very often scanning of documents? The former got vastly harder and the latter is impossible.

So, think of W8 what you will, but you've got to admit that Ballmer is seriously sticking it at those rich, powerful corpy bastards! A brave man. The Robin Hood for the new millennium.

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He's not a here. He just heard what Bill Gates said before: MS must get in the tablet market ASAP.

Windows 8 wont fail - case you hate it or not. Its a mandatory step to a fully tablet OS. Thats why it has some new things but besides the start menu, almost everything else is exactly the same.

The MS biggest customers dont upgrade to a new OS as soon its released but only a few years later and the Windows strongest point isnt it start menu or so on, but it his huge software compatibility, which is way better with Win 8 than ever before. Thats why nor Apple nor Google even tries to defeat MS in the desktop world - they're unbeatable.

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One thing pretty much everyone with a bit of brain grease knows is that you shouldn't annoy the people who have power and money. And although I dislike Win8 immensely I have to admit that Microsoft actually seems to be on some sort of strange anti-capitalist trip. The most loyal Windows strongholds are the corporations, governments and firms, the people with the POWER and the MONEY, yet Ballmer tries everything to annoy them! I mean WinRT doesn't even have APIs for scanner access:

I don't view it as an "anti-capitalist" attitude as such, it's more like an "anti-serious user of any kind" attitude. The removal of scanning functionality would affect private capitalist businesses for sure, but also noncapitalistic charitable organizations and government agencies. Further, it would affect any private individual user who's motivated and advanced enough to make use of a scanner.

So, personally I would count this as one more example of what looks like an ongoing campaign to cretinize Windows. (More polite verbs would be lobotomize, or cripple.)

--JorgeA

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I don't view it as an "anti-capitalist" attitude as such, it's more like an "anti-serious user of any kind" attitude. The removal of scanning functionality would affect private capitalist businesses for sure, but also noncapitalistic charitable organizations and government agencies.

--JorgeA

There are more WinRT limitations. Direct access of databases is forbbiden without a webservice middleman. That means software like Microsoft's own SQL Server Management Studio is impossible (richy corpy bastards will hate that!). Network access is severly gutted as well. Here's a list of more WinRT limits:

And don't forget - all the sandboxing makes any kind of sane plug-in system nigh on impossible, too - kiss goodbye to applications like MS Office and Photoshop! And no, Office 365 doesn't allow plug-ins as well as far as I know. BUSINESSES WILL HATE THAT!

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...So, personally I would count this as one more example of what looks like an ongoing campaign to cretinize Windows. (More polite verbs would be lobotomize, or cripple.)

--JorgeA

Spot on! It's about dumbing down the device. It is about them taking control and making all these devices which were once "ours" to become some kind of cable-TV / TV device with limited functionality. It is not "ours anymore. They want to rent these to us. PC was about empowering the users. Tablets and Smartphones are not. They are about creating a new "TV-era". They will be in control.

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Microsoft is desperate for a piece of the mobile market, and is trying their usual tactic of imposing control. But Android and iOS are already too mature for them to displace. And in the process of trying, it looks like they're just going to hurt Windows too.

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I don;t disagree that Microsoft should get into tablets ASAP (purely from a business sense point of view), but forcing the same interface across all platforms is just plain stupid. You can actually have a functional tabletesque interface whilst still being fully practical and useable for the desktop/laptop user. Microsoft want to use the same interface to encourage people to use Windows phones and tablets, but if anything it will probably turn them away! The issue is, because it really is an ineffective and unattractive UI on desktops and laptops, if they used Windows 8 on a laptop or desktop first you can safely assume that they'd probably go to an Android, Apple phone, or Symbian based (some basic smartphone) phones, or a Samsung/Apple etc tablet instead. If they used the tablet or phone first, they would probably use it on the computer (and be subsequently put off). The tablet to computer use really isn't necessary, people typically use Windows anyway so Microsoft aren't gaining anything! In fact, they're losing sales on desktop/laptops in addition to the lower tablet/phone sales.

Issues with Windows 8 (there are many more, these are just critical)

- it's unintuitive

- apps are 'dumbed-down'. Apps may be useful on tablets or phone where their limited functionality really shouldn't be an issue (since they functions are there for their practicality on the move in that situation, NOT for functionality), but they are woeful on desktop/tablets

- touch screen interface for a keyobard./mouse environment. Even with touchscreen computer screens, having to lift your arm up to put smudges on the screen isn't practical or ergonomic

- ugly. Some elements look half finished like the icon look on the Metro screen (reminiscent of Windows 95 icons), and the same goes for the 'open-with' dialogue window

- Office 2013 is not only ugly, it's a whole screen filled with while and slight off-white. This is very, very unpleasant to for several hours at a time, so I strongly recommend that people DO NOT waste their money on Office 2013, and hopefully Microsoft will get the message that some visual niceness isn't a bad thing, and that for continuous use a bit of contrast in the display colours is extremely beneficial. The Office 2013 interface just creates mental fatigue! You may notice that even in this forum, there are shades of blue and contrast, Office 2013 lacks all that! I mention Office 2013 because the styling cues resemble Windows 8 in that it's all about making the interface as plain, boring, and unpleasant as possible